News, August 2007

Local and Regional Elections

On May 27th there were elections for all municipal districts (cities and towns) and for some regional governments. Overall, the Partido Popular 'won' the local elections, although while gaining ground in Madrid and Valencia, hold over the regional governments of Navarre and the Balearics is in the balance. The representative of the island of Formentera holds the decision on whether the right or left wing rule in the Balearics. Socialist Lopez Aguilar (former justice minister) won in the Canaries, but if Coalición Canaria joins up with the Partido Popular the right may rule.

The main parties fighting for control of the town halls are the socialist PSOE and conservative PP. In addition, there are one or two left wing parties and groups campaigning at national level, plus numerous regional parties -left and right wing.

The Partido Popular leader, Mariano Rajoy, has suggested a deal with the socialists to rule where they got the most seats, thus allowing PP to hold Navarre and PSOE to gain the Canaries. A long way remains to be trod until pacts are sealed!

The main novelty this year is in the Basque Country, where Batasuna has become illegal since 2003, due to its links with ETA. Now the 'Basque left' created a new party, ANV, which put up lists in many towns and cities. The prosecutors challenged 133 of these lists due to their inclusion of prior members of Batasuna, which remains illegal due to its lack of a convincing renunciation of the use of violence to achieve political goals. At the last minute an appeal to the Constitutional Court was won and the court had one day to consider its verdict prior to opening of the campaign on 11th May. The government stance was upheld, admitting the party as such but rejecting lists which contained people previously members of Batasuna. Despite this rejection of the lists, the ANV becomes the third party by number of councillors in the Basque Country, winning in 31 towns, 17 outright. Their 337 total councillors is just 2 less than the Socialist PSE.

In Navarre the ruling right wing UPN won more votes, but insufficient to rule without the support of second voted Nafarroa Bai, linked to the Basque PNV, but which strongly rose probably due to Batasuna supporters. Can a right of centre party reliant on this left wing element go in with the anti-Basque Partido Popular aligned UPN? Would they rather see a Socialist led coalition?

In addition to the local polls, most regions (as mentioned) also have elections, although the most populous or traditionally separate regions have the right in their statutes to call elections when they want and therefore do not share this date. Such are Andalusia, Catalonia, the Basque Country and Galicia. In future years the new statutes in regions such as Valencia or the Balearics confer on them the right to set their own calendar.

A major factor this year has been the addition of many EU nationals and Norwegians to local electoral rolls. In some cases there are even British and German candidates, such as the left wing Bloc candidate for mayor of Palma (Mallorca) Eberhard Grosske. over 2 million new voters include these EU citizens, other immigrants who have taken nationality after living at least 10 years in Spain and of course, many young people.

Where do evangelicals stand in the current political situation? It is difficult to generalise, despite an historic tendency to be more left-wing than in many other countries. This article from Protestante Digital explains why the times are changing and there is now even a mayoral candidate standing for the right wing Catholic dominated Partido Popular. For most evangelicals, there is no clear favourite party, as they only represent a small percentage of voters. If immigrants had the vote, however, far more interest would be shown by parties in the religious minorities, since they now represent a total of 7% of the population, with evangelicals topping the list of non-Catholic religious groups.

Despite political tensions running high, there are stories of how people are getting across the divisions which have held Spain back for centuries. Such is this BBC story of love in the aftermath of the Civil War!